photo
caption:WHERE DO WE GO NEXT: Selby
(Christina Ricci, left) and Aileen (Charlize Theron) huddle together
trying to determine what their next move will be.end
caption.

Charlize
Theron Transforms Into "Monster" for an Oscar Quality
Performance

Last year, Nicole Kidman (The Hours)
was lavished with critical acclaim for making herself over into
the celebrated author Virginia Woolf with little more than a prosthetic
nose and an assortment of chapeaus. Since that transformation
was deemed Oscar worthy, then the Academy may as well name Charlize
Theron Best Actress now for her performance as Aileen Wuornos
in Monster. Theron completely disappears into her character
and I defy you to find any trace of the attractive model, turned
actress, who is usually cast in roles which take advantage of
her looks. Surrendering both body and soul to the demands of a
most-unflattering role, the unrecognizable Theron added 30 pounds
and did her best to depict her character as accurately as possible.
The real life monster this movie is based on was America's first
female serial killer, a Florida truck stop prostitute who took
to murdering her clients during a 1980s killing spree. Crazy-eyed,
crude, and profane, Wuornos certainly wasn't the sort of girl
you took home to mother.

What makes Monster fascinating
is writer/director Patty Jenkins' (Velocity Rules) decision
to imbue such an ostensibly unforgivable antagonist with a sensitive
side, redeeming qualities, and a rationale for her anti-social
behavior. The film is narrated from the killer's point-of-view
by the South Africa born Theron. She adopts a convincing, trailer
trash accent to explain her character's internally reasoned logic
for her subsequent felonious behavior.

We learn that Wuornos
was abandoned by her mother, raped, and impregnated at the age
of 13 by a friend of her father, and ended up homeless and surviving
by her wits soon after surrendering her baby for adoption. This
horrifying childhood, which undoubtedly left her traumatized,
led to a life as a streetwalker where she was frequently raped,
beaten, and cheated by her Johns.

So, by the time the ugliness
finally starts to unfold, the audience has been manipulated to
feel such sympathy for Aileen, that it's almost primed to forgive
the initial indiscretion. Still, murder is murder, and it soon
gets harder and harder to chalk up the increasingly sordid scenarios
to an abused childhood.

Though Monster is essentially
a Charlize Theron vehicle, a couple of other performances are
noteworthy. Christina Ricci, who did a decent job just last fall
in Woody Allen's Anything Else, does an even better one
here as Selby, the lesbian that the straight, but man-hating,
Aileen considers going gay for. Bruce Dern, who was nominated
for an Oscar for Coming Home, is memorable here in a minor
role as the monster's sole male friend and confidant.

A
chilling aside worthy of note: When she was 15 Theron's abusive,
alcoholic father was shot and killed, in self defense by her mother,
in front of her. Perhaps Charlize did such a phenomenal job portraying
someone seemingly indefensible because of the opportunity it simultaneously
afforded her to exorcise her own demons.